Composting report and other data from 2017

As our followers and community are aware, we have compost drop-off hours every Saturday to accept plant-based food scraps for compost. We also are currently collecting unsellable produce from the Windsor Terrace Food Coop and coffee grounds from Steeplechase Coffee. In our three-bin system, food scraps take about 6–9 months to decompose and then are sifted into usable compost. How does that all add up?

This year we took in 9,276 lbs of food scraps and finished 1,771 lbs of compost (it’s worth noting that due to that 6–9 month processing time, this isn’t a direct in/out relationship). Historically, this was our third biggest compost processing year (at least in the last five years that we have records for):

The NYC Dept. of Sanitation started their curbside organics collection in our neighborhood October 2013, which accounts for much of the decrease from 2014 and 2015, as our neighbors increasingly took advantage of that program. Our partnerships with WTFC (which accounted for 2,082 lbs of our food scraps total this year) and Steeplechase (which accounted for 1,143 lbs) have helped us make up the difference!

What other data do we have up our sleeves? Here are our harvest tallies from last year, which shows clearly how gloriously our cucumbers did last year and how much more kale we all grew and harvested above all other greens.